Backup to CD-RW

I am buying a CD writer for a very small business office running Win98SE. They currently use a tape backup system which they want to replace with re-writable CDs.
I want software that allows them to put a CD in the drive and come in to the office the next day with an incremental data-only backup written to the CD. They would take that CD out, put in another CD-RW, and repeat the process.
I have no experience with rewritable CDs on Win98 so I am wondering about how the CDs get formatted. Does the CD writer come with formatting software? Does the backup program automatically format the CD?
I want a process that is as slick as possible. Otherwise someone in the office will say "Why are we doing this? Tape was easier!" Thanks for your input.

 

What would you suggest as an alternate media type? Tape is out... expensive, not well supported, media easily compromised (magnetism, stretching, etc.). The only alternative I have heard about is an external hard drive or a thumb drive. The thumb drive lacks capacity and the external drive does not lend itself to multiple backups.

 

Yep, short term. But your concerns are duly noted and appreciated.

 

Thanks for doing the search job for me. You're making me look lazy!
I think I have all my answers now. I will explore the various backup programs mentioned in these links. I will be buying a Sony CD writer which includes InCD from Ahead software (The Nero people). The user can format some CDs using InCD and then use the backup program to write directly to the CDs. The only writer I have in my life is on my XP Home machine and I don't seem to have the option of creating a CD that immediately writes files. I have to go through 2 steps, move the files onto the CD using windows drag and drop, then write the files to the CD as a separate step. Anyway, thanks for your help etaf, and I will post my final solution here when all is up and running.

 

Have a look here in case my contribution to the thread has any bearing on what you want to do. Remember that the initial formatting of CD-RWs takes about half an hour each so it is a good idea to spend some time formatting a collection of them in advance. Bear in mind also that after a lot of use you will get a message (with InCD) to 'backup your data and reformat the disk'; don't ignore it or the data will be unreadable after a time.

 

Thanks johnni. Great tip on the reformat. When does the message typically pop up? Is it when you insert the disk (please say yes) or when the disk writing is being performed? I imagine you haven't seen the message often but it is a great feature of the formatting software if it works properly. I'm still pricing stuff out so I wonder if the other packet writing software solutions have the same feature. The thread you referenced is interesting and along the same lines. I will likely suggest the USB external hard drive to my client for their weekly system backups. I have discouraged them from doing the weekly backups because they have all of their installation disks so the data is the most critical. Thanks again and I'll post my outcome.

 

Was curious as to how much data you will be backing up? In these days 700 MB is not very much. The great thing about tapes is they generally are higher capacity than CDs and IMHO are easier to carry around than external HDD. For disaster recovery purposes you definitely want to keep the backup offsite so popping a Tape in your pocket is easier than a HDD.

Depending on how much you are backing up, perhaps you may look into a DVD burner.

 

I'm getting the information I require about current and expected capacity tomorrow. I would be surprised if the data requirement is currently greater than 100MB. There is no image data, just documents, a couple of databases and accounting stuff. You are right though. The DVD route is an option. The person responsible for the backup is dead set against tape.

 

I'm not sure why some consider cd-rw's superior over over a tape drive. The Marriott Corporation does their nightly backup on tape drives. (I use to work there and did it that way. The tapes held lots of info, we had 14 of them so that we rotated out a two week supply, and kept them in a drawer where typically magnetism wasn't an issue.

But if you are going to a disk backup why not a DVD? At least IT holds 4.7GB. I found some AWESOME tape backup drives that could hold up to 400 GB capacity on a single cartridge. All I did was go to one of the online stores and run down a list of tape drives and check the capacity. Liz